The unanimous three-judge opinion at the U.S. Court of International Trade remanding the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on April 1 for correcting deficiencies in the agency’s Administrative Procedure Act compliance extends the current litigation at least until mid-summer. The opinion, written by Chief Judge Mark Barnett and coming two months to the day after Feb. 1 oral argument was held (see 2202010059), gives USTR 90 days, to June 30, to respond to the remand order, and orders the plaintiffs and the government to submit a joint status report 14 days after that, including a proposed schedule on “the further disposition of this litigation.”
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A recent stipulated judgment in a case brought by North American Interpipe granting the importer refunds on Section 232 steel and aluminum duties is relevant to six U.S. steel companies' court actions that are seeking to intervene in challenges to the Commerce Department's Section 232 exclusion denials, the steel companies said. Filing a notice of supplemental authority to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the steel companies said that the settlement is "relevant to the parties' arguments concerning the potential for settlement of these actions" (California Steel Industries, Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2172).
An importer is asking the Court of International Trade to direct CBP to reliquidate entries of Chinese citric acid anhydrous that Thatcher says CBP improperly liquidated as subject to antidumping and countervailing duties. In its March 31 complaint, Thatcher said that CBP extended liquidation of the entries with neither a "statutory basis" nor the "legal authority" to do so and without instruction from the Commerce Department (Thatcher Company, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00067).
The Commerce Department opened the record on remand to accept Turkish exporter Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi's sections B and C questionnaire responses after the Court of International Trade ruled it was an abuse of discretion to reject the minutes-late submissions. In remand results filed April 1, Commerce dropped the dumping rate for Celik from 53.65% to 17.88%, centering the case on other issues in the antidumping duty investigation (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. U.S., CIT #21-00045).
The Court of International Trade should reject the U.S.'s motion to dismiss a case challenging the Commerce Department's denial of a request to issue a scope ruling since the motion is "factually and legally inaccurate," plaintiffs led by Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. said in an April 1 brief. The plaintiffs said that the U.S.'s position that jurisdiction would be established at the end of a changed circumstances review requested by the plaintiffs is "plainly without any factual basis and purely speculative" (Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00502).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative “properly exercised its authority” under the Section 307 modification provisions of the 1974 Trade Act when it ordered the imposition of the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, the Court of International Trade ruled in an April 1 opinion. Test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, plus the more than 3,600 complaints that followed, sought to vacate the tariffs on grounds that lists 3 and 4A were unlawful without USTR launching a new Section 301 investigation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on March 30 in an antidumping duty case affirming that the Commerce Department cannot make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test. The petitioner, Welspun Tubular, unsuccessfully requested a stay of the mandate so that it could appeal the matter to the Supreme Court (see 2203240063). The appellate court said that a stay of the mandate was not needed to preserve this right. In the case's opinion, the Federal Circuit said that Commerce can only make a PMS adjustment when calculating constructed value, affirming a long line of Court of International Trade decisions (see 2203220082) (Hyundai Steel Company v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1748).
There is no error in the Commerce Department's liquidation instructions, so importer MS Solar's lawsuit under Section 1581(i), the Court of International Trade's "residual" jurisdiction, should be dismissed, the U.S. said in a March 30 reply brief backing its motion to dismiss. Instead, the case should have been filed under Section 1581(c) to contest the antidumping duty review itself, the brief said (MS Solar Investments v. United States, CIT #21-00303).
The Commerce Department erred when it switched its zero percent dumping margin for Greek exporter Corinth Pipeworks Pipe Industry (CPW) to a 41.04% dumping rate despite the fact that the data was "entirely unchanged," the exporter told the Court of International Trade in a March 31 complaint. CPW also contested Commerce's use of adverse facts available despite the fact that it fully cooperated in the antidumping duty review and the agency's failure to conduct a verification, virtual or otherwise (Corinth Pipeworks Pipe Industry v. United States, CIT #22-00063).